All of these miniature electronics can be found on eBay and are not too expensive.

Some of the good model shops that specialise in small racing cars can also be very helpful - especially if the part (such as a combined receiver/speed controller) is a “spare part” for cars that they stock and sell anyway.

I have used Modelsport in Otley for some of my parts and found them to be a good supplier with reasonable delivery costs.

Bob.

That's good to know if I do change them. Where do you buy the parts?

Brubaker - this will probably be the way you have to go if you want to save what you have done so far. Out of interest can you post a photo of the boat including the inside.

Hi Chris,

RadioLink is the most popular radio used in our club and along with Spectrum is the one that I have seen used the most often with the miniature receivers, combined receiver/ESC, and the very small electric motors that have their own built-in ESC.

All three of the above systems work well with the miniature receivers combined to regular sized transmitters and bind in the way that is normal for the make.

Good quality radios are used as several can be raced in the hall together and need to work well to save any interference in such close proximity to each other.

Probably a much more demanding situation then when running a model boat outside, and range is not a problem as we are using the same transmitters.

Hope this helps if/when you decide to upgrade your smaller RTR model boats.

Bob.

That's useful to know. Do those for the smaller scales work with Radiolink Tx as well as some of my RTR boats are pretty small?

We forget sometimes that parts and components can be applicable between cars and other vehicles and boats unless we are interested in and run both.

If you do decide to upgrade any of your RTR boats that currently use a circuit board to provide all functions you may like to use the same smaller sized rx and ESC (and servos?) that we fit in our 1/12 scale LMP race cars that we run with RadioLink transmitters.

Even smaller 1/18 scale crawlers have been converted to run with standard size transmitters usuing a compatible combined rx and ESC,

Some of the small 1/16 scale buggies and trucks that we race use motors that actually have their own ESC built into them!

These tiny little combined motors and ESC give nothing away in performance to their separate component rivals.

These combined motors and ESC are so tiny that they “begger belief”, but we have been running them at our club for at least 2 years + and we have had no failures yet !

Bob.

This is the problem with ready-to-run boats that come with their own transmitter. I have a few I use for general boating and club fun racing that ideally I'd like to run with my better quality Radiolink wheel transmitter but as Bobby says components are integrated and I'd have to replace everything except the motors. Whilst they are working I'm not going to bother.

Trouble is as well that problems may be experienced in finding space for any replacement receiver and ESC as likely they will be bigger.

Transmitters are not universal and that is a very common problem to not being able to bind. The question should be what is the value of the boat you have this setup in. If you have a lot of work and/or expenses in it get something dependable. There are a variety of low cost systems that are dependable and have a better range. Don't put junk electronics in a good boat. Lew

Hope this is not too simplistic. Can you describe what electronics that you can see? for example can you identify the receiver, Speed controllers and servo? If so then there should be leads running to the receiver, and can these be unplugged? In this case you should be able to replace just the radio gear. If not then you probably have an integrated receiver and speed controller unit which only works with the transmitter provided. Hope this may be of some help

Hi - trouble there is wrecking 6 weeks of work. I used the bottom half of the Chinese boat let into the hull of the old RNLI Lifeboat. I then had to blend everything in with filler/resin and paint - the motors are twin jet units. All the electrics are built in to an all in sealed box - only has a power switch. With my Parkinson's a rip apart the box and soldering etc now beyond me.

My suggestion is to simply buy a new 2.4ghz R/C system from Amazon or similar site, and be done.